Prince William leaves customer shocked; major coronation cuts amid King Charles’ injury scare
Prince William left a customer shocked and his wife in stitches visiting a restaurant, as King Charles cut short a key coronation event. Watch video.
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Prince William has left his wife in stitches and left one unsuspecting caller at a family-run Indian Streatery in shock when the person taking his order turned out to be the first in line to the throne.
The Prince of Wales and his wife Catherine were in Birmingham at the Indian Streatery restaurant in the city centre, part of a nationwide tour ahead of next month‘s coronation of King Charles III.
Head chef and co-owner Meena Sharma said she was shocked when the phone rang and the prince took the order.
“Do we have a seat for two right now?’ Prince William asked Mrs Sharma. “Half past two?’ he suggested. ‘Does that work for you? No, apparently not right now.
“You’ve got a train at 3? If you could get in at half past two that would be fine. For two people? Maybe a quarter past two, and you could make the train at three?.”
Mrs Sharma tried her best to keep a straight face and said: “We have some guests in that are probably not going to leave by then. We don’t have any tables free.”
Hope we told this customer to come to the right place…! @indianstreatery pic.twitter.com/0dxzpegLqt
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) April 20, 2023
The only glitch in the amusing clip was that Prince William mangled the address of the restaurant.
As he put the phone down and the restaurant erupted in laughter, the prince said: “I’ve probably sent him somewhere else in Birmingham so I apologise.”
But despite the misdirection, the diner managed to find the place. At 2.15pm, the customer Vinay Aggarwal and his wife Ankita Gulati, visiting from London, arrived at the restaurant ahead of their train home at 3pm.
“(He) actually said ‘this is the Indian Streatery’, and there was a genuine person on the other end wanting to make a booking,” Mrs Sharma told the BBC.
“But I think he probably could have a role as a front of house manager, we could probably employ him to take phone calls in future as he did a really good job.”
Lunch at the @indianstreatery!
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) April 20, 2023
The Sharma Family don’t just bring authentic Indian street food to the city but do so much in the community too, including their all female chef team training many better cooks than us…! pic.twitter.com/7CXi28DJhM
The customer on the phone was Vinay Aggarwal who said they were surprised to find out who was on the other end of the line.
“I didn‘t recognise his voice at all, this is the first time I was listening to him on the phone, so I genuinely thought someone was taking the booking for me,“ said Aggarwal.
“It’s pretty amazing and a surprise.”
While at the restaurant the royals went head-to-head in a cooking competition, but the Princess of Wales — who was dressed elegantly in a burgundy pleated midi dress — was the clear winner.
The couple’s outing marks the royal couple’s first official engagement since their Easter break, which they spent with their children Prince George, nine, Princess Charlotte, seven, and Prince Louis, five.
CHARLES’ INJURY SCARE
King Charles III has cut short his coronation procession route to avoid crippling back pain while riding in the ancient Gold State Coach to Buckingham Palace.
The palace cut down the procession route from five miles to 1.3 miles after the coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey to prevent exacerbating debilitating back pain for the king and Queen in the 260 year old horse-drawn carriage.
“The palace is keen to not close down the shopping district at a time when London is still recovering from a footfall from the pandemic – they’re trying to combine traditional elements that you would expect with a coronation, most notably the Gold State coach, which of course is iconic in history, because the last time we saw it was 70 years ago,” said royal journalist and author Camilla Tominey.
“Back in 1953 when the Queen was crowned, it was convening a 25 year old woman at the beginning of the romantic new post war era for the UK to travel that distance, this time round is going to be a 74 and a 75 year old – that perhaps one of the reasons why the route is being cut down.”
“It (Gold Stage carriage) is not the most comfortable mode of transport, that is also an element – it’s a bit of a bone rattler. It’s no secret that the King and the Queen Consort have had respective back problems and sometimes take cushions on engagements,” said the associate editor for the UK British Telegraph.
“The palace doesn't want it to look like it’s a coronation on a shoestring. Why would you because the whole reason why people are drawn towards major royal occasions is because they have that extra sparkle and because of the pomp and pageantry for which the British are so world renowned.”
The Queen’s procession route travelled five miles through Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall, Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch, Oxford Circus, and finally down the Mall to end at Buckingham Palace.
The King and Camilla will make their way from Westminster Abbey via the traditional parliament Square route. It will pass Trafalgar Square, Admiralty Arch, and The Mall before returning to the Palace.
“The scale will still be really impressive, we don’t see this gold coach in the flesh at all apart from on these occasions, we saw it with the Platinum Jubilee and the Queen’s funeral,” said Ms Tominey.
“The technicolor on parade will be hugely impressive.”
The king, 74, suffers chronic back pain from years of playing polo.
In his memoirs Spare, the Duke of Sussex revealed his father battled “constant neck and back pain” for which he partly credited to his father’s old polo injuries.
He would perform half-naked headstands in boxer shorts to manage his chronic pain with Harry explaining how he would dread accidentally opening the wrong door at Balmoral Castle in Scotland out of fear of what was on the other side.
“Open the wrong door and you might burst in on Pa while his valet was helping him dress,” Prince Harry wrote.
“Worse, you might blunder in as he was doing his headstands. Prescribed by his physio, these exercises were the only effective remedy for the constant pain in Pa’s neck and back.”
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Originally published as Prince William leaves customer shocked; major coronation cuts amid King Charles’ injury scare
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